ADP + BLS = No Confidence In Jobs Numbers. None.

So the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Wall Street, and ADP all decide to meet Tiger Woods, Anthony Weiner, and Barry Bonds, at a bar called the ‘Isolated Incident.’ They were bounced, just like this morning’s jobs report which was not an isolated incident. On to the report. Not a sliver of silver in the lining. The U.S. economy added only 18,000 jobs in June and surprise, surprise; May’s 54,000 gain was revised down to 25,000, and April’s 232,000 fell to 217,000. Further, unemployment inched up to 9.2 percent, and the U-6; what most with any sense believe to be a more accurate reflection of the true number of unemployed also rose from 15.8% to 16.2%. This number reflects the long-term unemployed, or people remaining jobless for 27+ weeks. That is 6.3 million people. Think about it, un-numb yourself for a moment; 6.3 million people. Also, both average hours worked per week and hourly wages fell, a sign of a weak labor market needing steroids.

The BLS numbers are again at odds with the ADP report out July 6 that counted 130,000 new jobs, yet was still beneath the expectations of Wall Street which had expectations of 200,000 new jobs. Why the huge discrepancy? ADP surveys between 23-24 million and the non-farm payroll BLS number is larger by a multiple of roughly 9 times, and does not include government jobs which according to the BLS has been declining since 2008. So that’s the cause for ADP’s discrepancy, and Wall Street is either completely out of touch with the true output of the US firms of which they may or may not be shareholders in, or they are attempting to manipulate the masses by shorting optimism.

Now, Federal employment declined by 14,000 in June alone with total government payrolls dropping by 39,000, so perhaps the good news from one perspective is that our government is getting smaller….if you believe the numbers; which also state that government employment has been on the decline since roughly the middle of 2008….nah. We have no idea of how many people are unemployed, seemingly manipulate numbers for unrelated measures, and use revisions of previous official accounting so regularly that there is no confidence in the current reporting. Could you imagine a conference call with investors, and attempting to give guidance and report in this fashion on a quarterly basis as many companies do? No, you’d be fired.